It’s Like A Trend, Guys: Biting the Apple that Feeds Us
Okay, so you can blame it on MacWorld, but we’re all about Apple today.
Our Punk Marketing brethren (or sisteren), may recall from Punk Marketing that “beauty sells”—and we’re not talking gogeous spokes models.
Remember how we once sounded off that we loved how Motorola “got” it? And how the Razr’s consumer driven design differentiated their product from the rest of the crowd and transformed it into more than just a product, but an industry shifting icon?
Fast forward to today: the Razr’s out like a spot, and the iPhone’s in. So in.
Some of you may be left wondering, “What in the name of GiGi Allen’s rotting corpse happened?!!”
But it’s simple. Apple has done a better job at designing what consumers really wanted.
CNET called it a “great successor to the first Razr,” but we feel the Razr2’s touchscreen is underwhelming when we compare it the iPhone’s; reminiscent of such bandwagonry as the no-carb craze or “Extreme” anything.
Here’s what Wired’s Fred Vogelstein had to say about Apple’s iPhone in his article last Wednesday: “The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry”:
…But as important as the iPhone has been to the fortunes of Apple and AT&T, its real impact is on the structure of the $11 billion-a-year US mobile phone industry. For decades, wireless carriers have treated manufacturers like serfs, using access to their networks as leverage to dictate what phones will get made, how much they will cost, and what features will be available on them. Handsets were viewed largely as cheap, disposable lures, massively subsidized to snare subscribers and lock them into using the carriers’ proprietary services. But the iPhone upsets that balance of power. Carriers are learning that the right phone — even a pricey one — can win customers and bring in revenue. Now, in the pursuit of an Apple-like contract, every manufacturer is racing to create a phone that consumers will love, instead of one that the carriers approve of. “The iPhone is already changing the way carriers and manufacturers behave,” says Michael Olson, a securities analyst at Piper Jaffray….
Does anyone hear an echo? That’s because the iPhone’s success with consumers is rooted in the very same reasons we had said made Razr so successful—back then.
Motorola once ruled the roost when it came to the “must have” phone. But in our Brave New World of Blackberrys and iPhones gosh let’s remember it’s anybody’s game—but only if they slavishly attend to consumer-driven design tastes.
In one final bout of Apple worship we want to ask our participants…Didja get a glimpse of the MacBook Air?!!! Damn. That ain’t polluted….
Now THAT’s what we’re talking about. Go, Apple. Prove you can keep up the hype.
